The Eurocult Film Thread

I think this deserves its own thread. Just from posting on the other film threads, I know there're a few aficionados around: Octopus?, Idlerich, Jim Clarke, to name some. Contemporary Hollywood is pretty dull and annoying and hateful, Bollywood has phenomenal looking actresses but the films aren't worth watching, arthouse and indie films are aesthetically and emotionally moribund as they always have been, and we all have DVDs now, and it seems that the most arresting and insane and sexy and stupid and entertaining and emotionally extreme and weirdly avant garde films were all made in the 60s, 70s and 80s in Europe (I mean, apart from Japan and Hong Kong, but someone else can start a thread about Samurai and Yakuza and Shaw Brothers flicks because I don't know enough about that stuff).

Quite keen on a lot of the soundtracks but they are all so damn expensive (if like me you don't have a cd player and can only listen to vinyl). Which reminds me, does anyone know if the soundtrack to The Killer Nun ever came out ? I think it's Alessandroni and it's basically all variations on one track but I remember thinking it was wicked - and also hard to find.

Hardly seen any bollywood films so I won't argue with you there - but I have got quite a few of the soundtracks and I love them. Often far more readily available than their European counterparts and tending to be really fucking far out. Also they shamelessly ripped off loads of western stuff - presumably assuming that the originators would never hear their versions and wouldn't care if they did - and then stuck loads of filthy moog over the top. There is a wicked bollywood version of Rock-It but I forget what film it's from.

"This is a thread for gialli and Poliziotteschi and spaghetti westerns"

Any more westerns like Django Kill? Guess not. Absolutely loved Django but I don't know much about westerns. The Great Silence or however you translate it is good actually. I thought that Silence was going to pull it out of the bag like Django does at the end, boy was I in for a surprise (unless you watch the alternative happy ending that was made for.... Brazil was it?).

Nazisploitation is a funny one - who dreamt up that genre? Having said that I thought that Salon Kitty was really quite good and I understand that's the most famous film that is considered to fit in that category. What else is there that's at all well known and is any of it any good at all? Oh I guess there is all that Ilse stuff come to think of it.
Speaking of Tinto Brass, his first films are supposed to be really odd stuff. I'd be quite keen to see those although not so bothered about his later erotica stuff.

"Thanks for opening this thread. Also anyone into eurocult/eurotrash should check out this alpha-giallo blog."

Looks fantastic.

Anyway, my friend sent me a load of dvds that fit this thread (The Bloodstained Butterly, What Have They Done To Your Daughters, Strip Nude For Your Killer etc) last week so if I watch them this weekend I'll have something to talk about.

A number of directors I've never seen anything by but who sound interesting are Roland Lethem, Jose Benazeraf and Vincente Aranda. Bet you can tell me something about them Sub-Rosa. Roland Lethem may be more arty than falls within the scope of this thread but I would like to see The Crazed Sex of The Bloodthirsty Fairy (for starters).
Are you interested in Borowczyk at all? I thought La Bete was great and parts of Immoral Tales were fantastic (other parts weren't). I ordered his film Immoral Women (Les Heroines du Mal) a couple of weeks ago but it hasn't turned up yet, getting quite fed up with the post near me actually. Also he did an animated short film with Chris Marker called Les Astronautes which is quite interesting.
How about They Call Her One Eye (A Cruel Picture)? That's a great film I think, maybe has a different feel to the Euro cult things that you are talking about in this thread but it is European and shockingly sleazy. An absolutely grimey experience that is incredibly bleak, from the emptiness of the interiors - and what goes on in there - to the desolate landscape outside. The good guy wins in the end but what then?

Coincidentally, I was searching for a movie in my collection and found La Bete, put it aside to watch again. It's a great bestial fairy tale and surprisingly erotic too, although I couldn't stop laughing during that famous beast scene.
I watched the cut version of Thriller - en grym film and it worked really well for me without the inserted porn scenes. The movie could even be better without the extended slow motion, but nevertheless the slow motions gave an absurd inhuman feel to the movie. The cold architecture/d&#233;cor is usually something that the majority of Scandinavian movies use but in this case the impact was stronger I think. Maybe because the revenge genre and bleak Scandinavian scenes are not homogenous. Have you seen other Christina Lindberg's movies too? They are not that bad.

Vincente Aranda is famous for bringing convoluted plots to Spanish cinema. But cross-narrative is not very original today, it is a stereotypical thing of Spanish directors I think. If they tell I fell is not a bad movie though.

"Coincidentally, I was searching for a movie in my collection and found La Bete, put it aside to watch again. It's a great bestial fairy tale and surprisingly erotic too, although I couldn't stop laughing during that famous beast scene."

I'm not surprised, it's really fucking funny.

"I watched the cut version of Thriller - en grym film and it worked really well for me without the inserted porn scenes. The movie could even be better without the extended slow motion, but nevertheless the slow motions gave an absurd inhuman feel to the movie. The cold architecture/décor is usually something that the majority of Scandinavian movies use but in this case the impact was stronger I think. Maybe because the revenge genre and bleak Scandinavian scenes are not homogenous. Have you seen other Christina Lindberg's movies too? They are not that bad."

Yeah, I'm not sure that the porn scenes add anything other than an extra layer of grimness but I guess that's the point. Forgot about the super-slow motion bits for some reason although I remember being quite annoyed by them at the time now you mention it. I'm not sure if they work to make the film more inhuman, I just found them a bit silly - probably made the film more unreal and thus distracted from the dehumanising that went on within the film.
Never seen her other films.